Thanks to the 20 or so folks at BarCamp Birmingham (last month) that attended this session I had the privilege to facilitate. Group discussions are my favorite and best way of learning.  As promised,  the following is a post with the highlights of the discussion. What is “Gamification”? Wikipedia has a nice definition that is pasted here: “In behavioral economics, gamification is the use of game play mechanics for non-game applications, particularly consumer-oriented web and mobile sites, in order to encourage people to adopt the applications. It also strives to encourage users to engage in desired behaviors in connection with the applications. Gamification works by making technology more engaging, and by encouraging desired behaviors, taking advantage of humans’ psychological predisposition to engage in gaming. The technique can encourage people to perform chores that they ordinarily consider boring, such as completing surveys, shopping, or reading web sites.” The real goal of the session was to discuss “What’s your methodology for integrating game mechanics?” However, Giovanni was the only participant who had consciously made an effort to integrate game mechanics.  Their approach had been for the development team to anticipate what their users would like, and test it with their thousands of beta testers.   What’s on the table is taking these “game play mechanics” out of games. In some forms, there’ve been likewise motivations for eons. Examples included:

• Neighbor paints house. Other neighbors follow suit.
• Neighbor cuts grass, and incites other neighbors to mow.
• Discount drinks for Bar/Pub regulars in order to have a “crowd” that will draw full-price paying customers. Likewise coffeeshop people hanging out / leaching the wifi, draw paying customers.

Whether in competition or acceptance, time and time again, a significant number of game mechanics are socially oriented. Because we all have different values, not all game mechanics work with all people.  A spirited gender discussion ensued (in the room, there were 3 women and 17 men). It was pointed out that much of the classic “game” discussion and history of games was centered about males.  Farmville was pointed out as an exception. The professor from Sanford shared that in the dorms there, XBoxes & the like were only found in the male dorms (and none in the female dorms). He also compared the gender definition of success in comparing tale of     Books The Science of Influence – Looks at influence from a scientific marketing approach. Game Based Marketing – Talks about types of tactics   Incremental Incentives Automatic Effortless An app can’t solely be a series of game elements.  It must have other substance, and game mechanics can be used to enhance.   Dan Pink on The Surprising Truth about what Motivates Us http://www.ted.com/talks/robert_wright_the_evolution_of_compassion.html     http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neuromarketing http://techcrunch.com/2010/08/25/scvngr-game-mechanics/